"Hurry, hurry," Rashana said, "we have to get to the Yardsale..." She wore a frazzled expression, her golden hair looked uncombed and her blue cotton angel outfit was creased and wrinkled. She didn't look at all like I thought a Spirit of joy and creativity should look, but I didn't want to be judgmental so I thought about artists and writers I knew in order to come to a fair conclusion. It was true, most of them looked messy most of the time. So I came to the conclusion that creativity takes a toll on one's appearance.

"Why do we have to go?" I asked Rashana, back in the moment, "and what's the rush?"
"It's important," Rashana said, "we have to get there."
"Trust," I told my mind, and so I grabbed her hand and let her pull me along.

When we arrived at the entrance of the yardsale a bunch of children were playing, running around an infinity 8 track made of sticky white flour dough.
"What are they doing?" I asked. Rashana took a deep breath. "Marking time," she said, as though I should have known.

"But the dough is sticking to their feet and slowing them down," I said. "Look."
She shrugged. "It must be an experiment. 'Time on your hands' hasn't worked out for anyone, so maybe now the Creators are trying out 'time on your feet.'"

"Is that a joke?" I asked her.
"Do you think its funny?" she asked me.
"Not very," I said.
She stood still and studied me. "It was just a little creative thought," she said. "Don't make a big deal of it."
"Forget it," I said.
"What?" she said.
"You're making me crazy," I told her.
"That's good," she said, "It's just another kind of vision...."

It was then that we saw Pete, standing still as stone in the center of a small valley of his fallen beads - his expression a mixture of stunned silence and enormous sadness. His necklace had broken and every bead that he had saved, each bead that he had marked with an important time or an important event was now lying at his feet.

"Pete what's the matter?" I asked, because he was close to tears. Pete kept repeating over and over, as though in a trance, "My beads broke."
Rashana stayed silent and just watched us.
"Don't worry Pete," I said, trying to reassure him. "We can fix them. We can string them again..."

"You don't understand," he said, "each one of these beads represents a special time...when I first came to earth, when I first met my mother, then when we moved to our first new house in the country...Each of them represented a piece of time, and now some of them are lost." He just kept shaking his head. "I'll never recover all the lost time....." he mumbled.

I looked at Rashana but she offered no clues.
I moved closer to Pete and put my hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. "Even though you lost the bead, even though you might not find it, you still had the experience...You can't be this sad just because you lost some time."

Pete sighed. "I didn't want to save time, I just wanted to keep it..." he explained.
I was puzzled. "Are you talking about the concept of time?" I asked.
Pete looked at me, his clear blue eyes still glittering with unshed tears.
"I'm talking about a lifetime..."

"Come on Pete," I said. " A life is more than time spent. That can't be the only thing making you miserable. What is time anyway?"
Pete straightened up a bit, and I could tell he was trying to regain his composure. "I'm so upset, even I know it's not only time I'm upset about. It's much more."

I sat on the grass and patted the grass alongside me inviting Pete to sit down. Both of us forgot about Rashana. "Tell me about it," I said.
Pete tried to calm himself by taking slow deep breaths. Now, in his hands he held the pile of unstrung beads and just stared at them. His crystal beads glistened in the sunlight and the enamel ones were bright and colorful. They were all shapes and sizes.
"Look," he said, holding the beads toward us. "They're all mixed up. No one moment follows the other as they did when they were connected, they're all separate..."

"You can restring them, can't you? I asked. "Then it will be a necklace again, and you can wear it.." Pete frowned and said, "But they won't be in the same. Altering the way things are connected changes them. Each of these beads represents a moment in time, each moment was special, and I placed each bead alongside another that was also important, and after a while, there was a pattern to my life. There was some structure. Now that my beads are scattered all over, how am I supposed to connect them?"

"Memory threads," Rashana said simply.
Pete looked horrified. "Do you know what a tangled mess memory threads are?
Who's going to help me untangle them?'
"Maybe you can make a new pattern, with the most important points of interest to you," I said tentatively. "I know when I used to knit and my yarn got tangled, I used a knitting needle to loosen the knots and pretty soon the yarn was free again..."

"Points of interest?" Pete said, confused. "Each of these beads is a full blown heart memory but it was threaded in the right order. How am I supposed to remember the events that happened in my lives without a Timeline?"

Rashana was fidgeting, I could tell she was ready to move on, "Pete, you know that up here timelines dissolve. Here, there is no time. That's why your necklace fell apart. Time is a configuration that is only concrete on Earth. There, they need it. You don't."

"Arrange it into a new necklace," I suggested. "Arrange it according to what you remember most vividly. Put those moments in the center and then as the memories get less important or less vivid, put them toward the back.."

Pete looked at Rashana, and then looked at me. He closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking. He began to speak very softly. ".....The time I went to the football game, the time I fell in love, the time I got that great job, the time I first experienced pizza...The most vivid experiences were the ones when my mind was sharpest, when my heart was most open, when the experiences were most enjoyed.... when I was in my fifties, I guess....."

"There's a heart memory too," Rashana reminded. "And heart memory is timeless, not limited in any way. It beats with each breath so it has its own pattern. And Pete, what are you thinking? What about soul memory?

That's got a pattern too. Breathe in through your heart and you'll find one pattern. Breathe in through your soul and you'll find another. But nothing is ever really lost, you've still got everything you ever had. The patterns will just be a little different. And change is good, it's important, you know that!"

Pete took a deep breath in and suddenly a smile crossed his face and his blue eyes lit up. "Got one!" he said. "A great memory. Me, screaming, when I was born on earth....!"
Rashana patted him on the shoulder. "See, I told you..." she said.
I looked over at her. "Are you supposed to say 'I told you?' I asked. It didn't seem very spirit-like to me.
"Why not?" she said. "I did tell him."
I shrugged.

Pete seemed a little better now about the problem with the beads, but suddenly another problem seemed to surface. His shoulders drooped and he explained, embarrassed, "You're right. There is another problem I'm struggling with. The truth is suddenly I'm fascinated by rain sticks...I love rain sticks."
"Great," I said. "So where are the rain sticks?"
"Right past the toaster section," he said. And then he sniffled and blew his nose into a red handkerchief he pulled from his shirt pocket.

"So now you like rain sticks and toasters," I said, with a note of happiness I could hear in my own voice. Pete shook his head. "See," he said, "you don't understand. I never imagined I could stop loving toasters. Loving toasters, spending time with them, studying them occupied most of my time. Now that I love rain sticks, I don't love toasters in the same way. I would never have believed that kind of feeling could change. And that's what I'm really sad about."

I asked, "Why? Especially if you love rain sticks now....Maybe the toasters have served their purpose." Pete lowered his eyes, looked guilty. "And then what will happen to the toasters? If nobody loves them, what will happen to them?" he asked. "If nobody needs them what will happen to them?"

I tried to console him, tried to tell him that maybe someone else would love toasters but he told me that wasn't the point. "Don't you see?" he said in a most impassioned voice, "I can't believe that I don't love them anymore. There's almost no me without my love for toasters, I've loved them so long..."

"But now you love rain sticks," I said, "you can really have a whole new adventure, you can explore rain sticks." "I know," he said, "but you can't make toast with rainsticks. Rain sticks aren't toasters."
"True," I said. "But you can dance with rainsticks, not toasters." Pete didn't look comforted so I said, "I guess you're really going to have to work that out. Relationships of any kind are tricky."
"I know," he said. "I know..."

I was trying to take his mind off his broken beads and toasters, and so I asked, "Anything new come into the yardsale?"
He nodded. Then waved without looking toward the far end of the yard. "Got a whole new virtual world over there," he said.

"What can I get there? What will I find?" I asked him.
"Virtually anything," he said. "Go take a look." But he said it without any enthusiasm. Still, I walked through the yardsale with Pete shuffling alongside me, until I arrived at the gates of the Virtual World.

"Want a virtual relationship?" he asked, and then sighed.
"No thanks," I said. "I have a couple of those already."
"Want to take a virtual trip?" he asked then.
"Okay," I said, not wanting him to feel more desolate. "We could do that."

We took one virtual leap and before I knew what was happening we were watching 3D flowers flying, animated birds walking and talking in several languages, huge trees with money like leaves hanging along shiny golden apples.....

"How do you like this?" Pete asked me. "Are you having fun?"
"It's all right," I said. But it really wasn't. I was bored. Pete noticed and asked, "Want a job?" I shrugged and we took another leap into the virtual office where several ideal looking characters were sitting at similar desks, in small neat compartments. "There's something missing here..." I told him.

"Nope," he said, "It's virtually perfect... Been set up that way."
"That's not what I mean, Pete," I said. "I mean something's missing. I can't smell anything, can't hear anything really. And nothing feels real..."
"Oh, that's coming," he said. "Touch screen, smell phones..."
"But what about nature?" I asked.

Pete looked surprised that I didn't understand. "That's part of time passing," he said. "It's part of change. All that belongs to the natural world we live in now will become extinct as we evolve into a virtual world."
"But what about real flowers?" I asked, "What about real trees, and grass and lakes and oceans and fish?"
Pete patted my hand. "There will be museums..." he said. "Natural History Museums...for children to learn what it was like when the world was God given more than man made..."

I stopped, my heart heavy, "But what will they learn from a few little flowers, from a few captured trees, from a few floating fish?"
"The longing will teach them...." Pete said sadly. "Like it's now teaching me."
"Let's get out of here Pete," I said. "I can't stand it another minute..."
"Sure," he said. "I understand." Then he smiled at me. "Mind if we stop by the toaster section one more time?" he asked. And now I understood. "No, I don't mind, Pete," I said, "In fact, I'm really in the mood to visit a few toasters myself."

Later, after leaving Pete to say his farewells to the toasters, Rashana and I walked back to the entrance of the yard. Rashana turned to me and asked, "Where do you want to go today? Back to the virtual world?"
I shook my head. "No," I said emphatically. "I want something realer today."
"Okay, she said, "Let's take a look around."

On one of the tables there was a small pot of violets. Longingly, I walked over to them and lovingly I smelled them. I smiled. "I want this," I said. Yesterday in the virtual world had really shaken me.
"Okay," she said.
Next to the violets on the table was a pot of lilies of the valley. "This too," I said, looking toward her for approval.
Anything else? she asked. She looked amused.
"The lilacs," I said, pointing to one long stem in a cracked and dusty vase.

My arms were full of flowers as we walked around the yardsale again. I was looking for something really special. We passed another gazebo. This one was tall, intricate and brass. And on a rack in the very front, there hung a pair of lavender genie pants. Gossamer thin and light as a feather.

"Want to try on those?" Rashana asked. "They're magical dancing pants."
"Oh no," I said. "I don't want to get into the 8 pants of meaning...."
"There are ten," Rashana said, and she winked.
"Forget it," I said. "And laugh at me if you will...."

Then as we passed another long table filled with books and pens, I saw a techno pen with a flashlight on it. And next to that there was a miniature violin. I picked them up. I liked them both. "Choices," I said. "I don't know that I really like choices..."
"Well," Rashana said, "This one isn't hard. Do you want to see where you're going with your writing, or do you want to feel the music in the melody of the story?"
I made a face at her. "You sound as though you think you're making sense..." I said.

Rashana stopped dead in her tracks. "I am making sense," she said. "It may be the sixth sense or even the seventh sense but it makes sense to me." We passed the snack bar, and the Family Recreation section and went to sit on the bench in front of the Relationships Pavilion.

"You know, Rashana," I said." Until the last time we came to this yardsale, I always thought I wanted to incarnate on another realm. Something more evolved. I felt Earth was too primitive. I wanted to live someplace where there was no hunger, no anger, no injustice, no unhappiness. But when I went to those techno worlds and experienced how isolating it felt to live in the virtual worlds, I had a change of heart. Earth is beginning to look a lot better and certainly more 'real.'"

"It's not necessarily better. And the gross world is not necessarily the only real world, subtle worlds are real," Rashana said. "In other worlds on other realms, there is experience too...its not better or worse, just different. Sort of like the difference between oil painting and watercolor pastels..."

"But where else can you dance?" I asked.
"You can dance on any realm," she said. "The only difference is that on some, you become the music you dance. It's a vibration and frequency thing.."

"I don't get it," I said.
"That's because for you its a foreign experience..." Rashana laughed then.
"You're like Pete. Your beads broke so you don't remember the experiences..."
I frowned. "Why do you think all this is so funny?" I asked. "My heart was broken, I was very sad seeing the future of a virtual world. If you are my spirit, you're supposed to be a comfort..."

"I can't always be what I'm supposed to," Rashana said. "Sometimes I just have to be who I am. And a broken heart isn't necessarily something to feel bad about. Sometimes it just means a growing heart...sometimes the pain of a broken heart is really only growing pains..."

I looked at her, all bright and luminescent in her long blue robes and thought to myself that she looked a little too smug...."How do you manage to twist everything around so it means something else?" I asked.
Rashana looked surprised. "Twist?" she said, "I was untangling your memory threads....I was being helpful. After all, I am your spirit of Truth and Creativity."
"Your truth isn't necessarily my truth," I told her.
"That's the point," Rashana said. "It's supposed to be. We're a team you and me...and we have to, at some point, be able to see a common truth."
"How?" I asked. "Especially when you're looking down and I'm looking up?" Rashana raised her eyebrows and looked thoughtful. "Maybe we have to start looking 'I' to 'I'," she said. And then she giggled.

By the time we got back to the gate, Pete was humming and threading his beads into one of the longest necklaces I'd ever seen. It was different from the one he'd always worn, but it was fascinating anyway. "Good job," I said, pleased he was no longer unhappy.

"Creative!" Rashana said, "Why did you put the purple crystal in the front? What favorite event is that?"
Pete smiled. "My first moment in time," he said. "The first birthday I remember.....Funny, it was the day I fell to Earth."
"Well," Rashana said, smiling at both of us, "Earth does have its charm...it's just that few people appreciate it while they're living there. But that's the nature of separateness, all aspects in harmony or conflict. Its a funny place...but, as you say, Pete, one that you remember with fondness."

Before Rashana left, she touched me gently on the cheek, "See if you can enjoy this trip, record the experiences before they become memories, and have a good time while you're on earth. Find the truth. It will set you free..."